Recent Updates (September, 2018):
- New Adventure Zones: Goblin Necromancer, Viscous Muck Dragon, Clockwork Colossus, Golden Goblin.
- Empire Progression: A new system of permanent advancement for your empire. Players now achieve goals and unlock rewards as their empires progress.
- Workforce: You can now instruct your NPCs to keep specific amounts of different items rather than processing them.
- Naming: You can now name roads (in addition to buildings, cities, and islands). This might just make it easier to get around.

EmpireMUD has been around since 2000, with version 2.0 in development since 2013 by the original EmpireMUD creator, Paul Clarke. Check our website to see the world map, and for a link to the GitHub project where you can get your own copy of EmpireMUD's codebase.

EmpireMUD's emphasis is on politics, trade, building, and resource management, in addition to an adventure system where players can quest for glory. Players join existing empires or found their own to forge powerful alliances.

Features
* ASCII map navigation in a huge 1800x1000 user-modifiable world
* Screenreader mode allows easy map navigation for the visually impaired
* Your class is based on which skills you focus on
* Over 300 unique abilities to choose from
* Unique building & crafting system with 270+ buildings and 750+ crafts
* Delve into 45+ instanced adventure zones
* Active programmer adds new features and content weekly based on player input and feedback
* Support for MSDP and MXP

Visit the homepage for help or use the INFO command. JOIN AN EMPIRE to get started -- or found your own!

Now on Facebook! Like the fan page and join the discussion group!
EmpireMUD is also looking for builders who want to design and create content using our contextual in-game editors. EmpireMUD lets you edit crops, buildings, mobs, factions, and 20 other data types. It also includes a port of the DG Scripts scripting system.

Map is top down, world size is 1000x1800 tiles and everything that isn't ocean
can be built on.

Establish an empire by laying the foundations of a cabin, then grab more
territory and build an outpost. Build more and gather more resources and grow it
to a village, keep at it and build a massive capital city on your own to sustain
your quest for more powerful items or ... join another kingdom and work together
for even more wealth and power.

The quests appear in instances. Some at fixed locations in certain buildings,
others randomly in certain regions or around cities. Some you can complete on
your own, others you'll need strong party for.

Why join an empire or build your won? Because while decent equipment can be found
in quests, the truly powerful ones can only be built with the backing of a strong
economy.

While playing on EmpireMUD with a friend, I was told that after three weeks of playing there
with them that I was no longer allowed to play with them I'd been accused of multiplaying.
Evan, who is now Zeon had this axe to grind because he needed to prove himself as a threat
neutralizer. He over-zealously accused that I had tried to crash the mud and then went on to
accuse me of crashing the mud to purposefully dodge the situation. After I tried to prove that
I was not multiplaying with my friend and offered my phone number and skype as proof that
we were two different people just at my house, the admins shied away from that and stuck
to their guns. Then, they even had the audacity to call me a liar! When I finally came back
I was telling my friends I'd made over the course of time what happened and why I was gone
for a while. Ten minutes after, Zeon rudely and arrogantly made this retort:

--- Connected on Sunday, May 03, 2015, 6:06 PM ---

Zeon has transferred you!

Zeon says, 'Hey there.'

You bow deeply.
You say, 'how may I be of service?'
Zeon says, 'We gave you a pretty specific list of things not to do if you wanted to still play here.
I don't know if you wrote them down or not, but you should have.
I'm sorry, but I'm no longer allowing you to remain on EmpireMUD.'
You say, out of character, 'Brent.'
You say, out of character, 'oh? What happened this time?'
Zeon says, 'You were told by Paul not to bring any other players into the situation.'
You say, out of character, 'so telling them what happened is bringing them into it?'
Zeon says, 'Yes, especially if you're outright lying about the situation. Goodbye.'
You say, out of character, 'I mean people do get curious as to why I wasn't around.
Was I supposed to just say nothing?'

--- Disconnected on Sunday, May 03, 2015, 6:40 PM ---

Here, Zeon mentions a list of specific things that never existed! Could it be to prevent bad publicity?
I can assure you the answer is a resounding yes! Do you think that I was banned from this game
to prevent me from telling people about how this guy misuses his power? Absolutely! Why else would
someone quickly try to silence a potential threat to their position of power?

So in review: This is a well coded game. There are many fun skills and abilities.
But unfortunately the word of the imms is law, even if it's wrong, the imm is always right, not the customer.
My suggestion: Run far, far away from this place and see if you can find someone who has a copy of 1.0 running.

Your line about the Imms always being right not the customer. Did you
pay for this game? If not you arent a customer. The Imms have spent
who knows how many hours of their personal time building a great game,
so I think they have a bit more at stake when it comes to the game
than an unpaying player. Whether or not you were multiplaying, they
asked you not to involve others. You went against that so they removed
you for causing drama. Posting this rant as a review is just proof
that you want to stir the pot.

Comment posted on Fri Jun 19 20:52:41 2015 by Lars:

'the customer is always right'
It's a figure of speech. Figuratively speaking dude,
the idea is that if you run the place, you care about
the people that have concerns or qualms about how
things are being done. Of course, you took that literally
just to justify your point when the obvious implication
was that it only goes to show how apathetic towards the
players' concerns this person was. Basically what I'm
saying here is that I got accused of something and
instead of being reasonable and understanding,
it was only one way. So instead of treating me with
respect like a person should be treated, or hearing
me out about the issue at hand, it was more like
'it is what I say it is and if you tell anyone then
you aren't allowed here anymore.' Stir that in your
pot and see if it makes any sense.

Review posted by Evan/Zeon

Posted on Fri May 15 02:53:21 2015 / 0 comments

Display Review

EmpireMUD is a codebase that has been in the general community
knowledge for over a decade now. It comes up and now and then
and is frequently cited as an excellent unfinished codebase.

This is no longer the case. In April of 2013, Paul Clarke came
back to re-initiate development and has made massive strides
in the last two years. The game now has an original theme and
many of the issues that plagued EmpireMUD 1.0 have been fully
addressed. The game is almost completely unrecognizable from
how it was previously and the parts that worked well have been
considerably improved.

The game features the ability to create your own city with its
own unique design on an ASCII map as well as create your
character from one of 8 different skillsets with many unique
abilities not seen on other games. The game also features an
extensive crafting system that scales with your character's
skill level, allowing you to be valuable even if you want to
be a non-combat character.

Paul is one of the most responsive MUD administrators I have
ever met. He takes feedback seriously and on several occasions
I have seen him completely change a system over multiple issues
being brought up over its design. He also has gone out of his
way to make the game extremely screen reader friendly, so we
do absolutely want you to play with us if you use one and are
constantly taking feedback about how we can improve the game
in that regard.

I have been playing this game for quite a while and found that it is
very enjoyable if you are the type of person who likes to build an
empire which you can do solo or with the cooperation of other players.
The mud gets frequent updates which makes it a lot more funner and
even more enjoyable for new players who wish to get into the mud. If
you are first starting, I would recommend joining an empire and
learning the ropes of the game, before attempting to fashion your own
town.. but by no means do you have to start an empire yourself. Being
a part of an empire also has its very fun sides, such as building,
creating tools for your empire, mining, fishing.. the possibilities
are endless. Roleplaying is recommended and encouraged, but not
entirely necessary. There are many features which this game possesses,
and will definitly take hold on those who are creative and ambitious
enough to become the top empire. While the mud is very enjoyable to
play with other players, especially roleplayers, it is also the same
exact thing it lacks... players. So stop by and give the mud a try,
and I am certain most will find it just as enjoyable as I have.

Hi, I'm known as Deus on Empiremud 2.0 and I have been
playing since April 16th of this year but I have played many
iterations of Empiremud over the years, and I am happy to
say that Paul Clarke is back and developing the mud again. I
sincerely hope for the best in the future of Empiremud gaming
as we progress toward the future.
To put things into perspective I have been actively
advertising for this mud for quite a while now and not because
someone asked me to but because I truly enjoy playing this mud, and
I am very pleased that it is gaining so many new faces every day
because of its previous following. Not only because of that but I
hope because of my efforts to promote the mud too, this has been a
very fun experience for me to watch this mud unfold before my very
eyes taking a completely new direction away from the World of
Darkness translation that it used to be.
If I had to pick a part of the mud that I show favoritism to
that would likely be the crafting and building aspect of the game
but I also enjoy the combat as well since it isn't required that
you perform combat to 'grind' for experience but instead you can
go hunting to improve your survival and battle skills. I really do
love this mud and it's new skill tree that it has, here is a run
down of the skill tree and how it basically looks in game without the
fancy colors:

Now I'm sure a lot of you remember that there was also werewolves
and not just vampires but I don't know if they are going to make a
comeback or not. I do know that the mud a lot of us have grown to
love is definitely worth playing now with all the many many changes
being made to it every day. I would post the change log here but
it would just be better if you go to the site at empiremud.net and
check it out for yourself.
I don't think that I have ever played such a richly diverse
game that is open to many aspects such as war, politicis, simple
roleplay, complex storylines, and much more of course. If you
haven't figured it out yet this mud is 100% player driven almost
everything is player created from the cities and its streets right
up to castles and guard towers, this mud is one of the greats in
my opinion and I will keep playing it till either paul tosses in
the towel or I am dead, that is how dedicated I am to this mud.
It is not just a like it is a love of mine and I will go to
the ends of the world to see it expand and grow and I just want
others to know about it so that they can see this mud for themselves
and who knows maybe they will grow to love this game as much as
I have. Granted this mud is being developed but it is in a
playable state with very few bugs and has very very VERY little
downtime if any at all so I encourage the mud community to come check
this place out.

Thankyou for taking the time to read this and I hope
to see you on the map!

I used to play a copy of the empire mud code back when Paul still
hosted it and was working on it himself. Sure, some of the features
were never completed, but from what I've heard in the past couple of
days I've spent playing on this copy, the people hosting it are
actively working to finish up everything that was never finished.